CNN
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Former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer, according to a statement from his personal office Sunday, and it has spread to his bones.
“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” the statement said.
It continued, “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”
Biden, 82, and his family “are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” the statement said.
Biden is at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, this weekend according to a source familiar. CNN has inquired about where the former president is being treated.
The news comes days after a spokesperson for Biden said the former president was recently evaluated for a “small nodule” discovered on his prostate.
Concerns about age and health dogged Biden, the nation’s oldest sitting president, throughout his time in office and came into sharper focus following his halting debate performance against Donald Trump last June.
In February 2024, Biden underwent a physical at Walter Reed National Military Center overseen by his physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor, who at the time said there were “no new concerns” with the president’s health and he was “fit for duty.”
Even before Biden’s disastrous debate that led to his decision to exit the 2024 election three weeks later, a new book from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson describes how the president had been showing signs of his decline that aides ignored or explained away.
Tapper and Thompson write that Biden’s aides privately discussed whether they would have to put him in a wheelchair for his second term and that Biden didn’t recognize movie star George Clooney at a June 2024 fundraiser.
Biden has maintained a relatively low profile since leaving the White House but has slowly started to reemerge on the public stage. He appeared alongside his wife, Jill Biden, earlier this month on ABC’s “The View,” where he pushed back on suggestions he experienced cognitive decline in his final year in office.
“They are wrong,” Joe Biden said. “There is nothing to sustain that.”
The former first lady added, “The people who wrote those books weren’t in the White House with us, and they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day. He’d get up, he’d put in a full day and then at night, I’d be in bed reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings, working with staff.”
Biden has long advocated for increased cancer research, establishing the “Cancer Moonshot” initiative in the wake of his son Beau Biden’s death from brain cancer. The program, founded while Biden was vice president, was reestablished in 2022 with the goal of “ending cancer as we know it.”
“We’re mobilizing the whole country effort to cut American cancer deaths in half by 20, 25 years and boost support for patients and their families. I’m confident in our capacity to do that. I know we can, but it’s not just personal — it’s about what’s possible,” Biden said last August.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Arlette Saenz, Kit Maher, Julia Benbrook and Jeremy Herb contributed to this report.
